Jury selection gets under way next Tuesday in the bribery trial of New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez. It sets in motion a swirl of speculation about a shift in the balance of Senate power less than a month after Republicans fell one vote short of repealing Obamacare, with the surprise “NO” vote of brain cancer-stricken Sen. John McCain.

Menendez is accused of using his Senate seat to help the financial interests of a friend, Dr. Salomon Melgen, who allegedly returned the favor with almost a million dollars in gifts and campaign contributions. Menendez has repeatedly said he’s innocent. After his indictment on April 2, 2015, he told reporters, “these allegations are false, and I am confident they will be proven false, and I look forward to doing so in court.”

On the same day, his high-powered attorney, Abbe Lowell, reminded reporters of the Department of Justice’s track record in winning political bribery convictions.

“As we have seen in so many cases, from former (Department of Housing and Urban Development) Secretary in 1999, to Sen. Ted Stevens in 2007, and two years ago in the case of Sen. John Edwards, prosecutors at the Justice Department often get it wrong,” Lowell said. “These charges are the latest mistakes,” he said.

JUDGE: DEMOCRAT BOB MENENDEZ MUST FACE CORRUPTION CHARGE IN COURT

But even if he is found guilty, a bribery conviction would not force Menendez out of the Senate.

He would have to voluntarily step down or be expelled by a two-third’s majority in the Senate. Even if all Republicans voted for expulsion, they would still need 15 Democratic votes, an unlikely outcome given Democrats propensity to oppose virtually all of President Trump’s agenda.

New Jersey’s governor would be responsible for appointing Menendez’s successor. But the gubernatorial election to replace Republican Chris Christie is only months away, and Menendez could agree to leave after New Jersey’s next governor takes office.

“They’re going to elect a new governor and the Democratic candidate is heavily favored in that race,” says David Byler of Real Clear Politics.

Further bolstering Menendez’s chances, since he was indicted, the Supreme Court unanimously threw out the bribery conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, setting an even higher bar for future political bribery convictions.

Doug McKelway joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in November 2010 and serves as a Washington-based correspondent. Click here for more information on Doug McKelway.

Jared Tucker, a Northern California man who was spending his first wedding anniversary in Europe has been identified as the American citizen killed in the deadly truck ISIS terror attack in Barcelona, Spain, his family said Friday.

“We just got the text — Jared’s body was identified at the morgue by his wife,” his father, Daniel Tucker, told the Daily News. “It’s just something we really just don’t understand. I don’t know what else to say.”

Heidi Nunes, 40, of Walnut Creek, Calif. said she and her husband Jared Tucker, 42, were in Europe celebrating their one-year wedding anniversary, according to NBC News. The two already had made stops in Paris and Venice. Nunes said the couple were savoring drinks in the famous tourist area of La Ramblas when chaos broke out.

CIA WARNED BARCELONA ABOUT TERROR THREAT, REPORT SAYS

Nunes said the attack occurred shortly after her husband left to go to the bathroom and she went off to look at some jewelry.

Nunes shared a picture taken of her and her husband, who leaves behind three daughters, shortly before the terror attack, smiling and enjoying drinks.

BARCELONA TERROR ATTACK DEATH TOLL RISES, FOURTH SUSPECT ARRESTED

“The picture was taken about an hour before the attack while we were sitting at a little patio,” Nunes said.

Jared Tucker worked with his father at a family-owned pool business in the San Francisco Bay Area since he was 16, Daniel Tucker said.

About eight hours after a vehicle rammed into a crowd of pedestrians in Las Ramblas, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens of others, another attack was carried out in the Spanish resort town of Cambrils, where at least one person was killed. Police have arrested four people in connection with the terror attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.

A Michigan man convicted in the 1995 murder of another man who expressed romantic interest in him on national television is expected to be released from prison.

Jonathan Schmitz was 24 years old when his acquaintance Scott Amedure, 32, revealed he was romantically interested in him during a taping of the Jenny Jones Show. Schmitz, who said he wasn’t gay, fatally shot Amedure in Lake Orion three days after the taping.

Schmitz turned himself in to police, saying he killed Amedure because he was embarrassed on national television. He was sentenced 25 to 50 years for second-degree murder.

Schmitz, now 47, was granted parole after a March hearing and is scheduled to be released from Parnall Correctional Institution next week.

Scott’s older brother, Frank Amedure Jr., said he’s troubled by the parole decision and that he’s unsure Schmitz “learned what he should have” in prison.

“I wanted assurance that the (parole board’s) decision was not based on just good behavior in prison,” he said. “I’d like to know that he learned something, that he’s a changed man, is no longer homophobic and has gotten psychological care.”

Geoffrey Fieger, who served as an attorney for the Amedure family, said that everybody involved in the Jenny Jones Show also deserved imprisonment.

“That show set him (Schmitz) up and certainly took Scott Amedure’s life for no reason,” Fieger said.

The episode never aired but clips were shown on news shows.

The Michigan Department of Corrections doesn’t list an attorney for Schmitz.

The ridiculous campaign by virtually every media outlet, every Democrat and far too many squishy Republicans to label Trump some kind of racist and Nazi sympathizer is beginning to have the stink of an orchestrated smear. The conflagration in Charlottesville is beginning to feel like a set-up, perhaps weeks or months in the planning. Planned by whom? Time may tell. We know that Michael Signer, the mayor of Charlottesville, declared his city to be the “capital of the resistance” just after Trump’s inauguration. We know that Gov. Terry McAuliffe is a corruptocrat, joined at the hip to the Clintons. He pardoned sixty-thousand felons in order to ensure he delivered his state to the presidential election of Hillary Clinton. We know he would like to run for president himself.

We know that Obama and his inner circle have set up a war room in his D.C. home to plan and execute resistance to the Trump administration and his legislative agenda. None of these people care about the American people, or the fact that Trump won the election because millions of people voted for him. They suggest those deranged persons who gathered in Charlottesville as members of one of several fringe groups, Unite The Right, neo-Nazi or KKK, are Trump’s base — as if there are more than a few hundred or thousand of them throughout the country. There are not enough of them to affect anything or elect anyone. Those who are actual members of these small groups are most likely mentally ill to one degree or another. Trump has disavowed them all, over and over and over again. Liz Crokin, an entertainment reporter and no fan of Trump, wrote in 2016 that she had covered Trump for over a decade and in all that time, no one had ever suggested he was racist, homophobic, or sympathetic to white supremacists. That all began after he announced his campaign. It is as fake a narrative as the “Russia collusion” meme. The left set out to defame Trump from moment one. When he won the election, their shock, dismay and intolerance for every opinion that differs from their own shifted into hysterical overdrive. They mounted their crusade to destroy his presidency on Nov. 9, 2016.

What if Signer and McAuliffe, in conjunction with Antifa and other Soros-funded groups like Black Lives Matter, planned and orchestrated what happened in Charlottesville and meant for events to unfold roughly as they did? If they did, it was icing on their sick, immoral cake. If this was all part of a plan, one would hope those behind it suffer for their part in and responsibility for the tragic death of a young woman, Heather Heyer. The “founder” of Unite The Right, Jason Kessler, was an activist with Occupy Wall Street and Obama supporter.

Jason Kessler at Charlottesville City Hall, August 13, 2017

He sees himself as a professional provocateur. What if he was a ringer, a phony who revels in riling up some crazy people for some political purpose? We know the left is skilled in all manner of dirty tricks. That sort of thing was Robert Creamer’s job for the Hillary campaign, hiring thugs to incite violence that could then be blamed on Trump supporters. Think of Ferguson, Baltimore, Berkeley, etc. Antifa and BLM are every bit as fascist as any of the supremacist groups; they are more violent and there are more of them. Why is the left so afraid to admit this fact? Even Peter Beinart did in the Atlantic, written before last Saturday.

Since that day, the call to remove the statues on display that honor any members of the Confederacy has become shrill and frenzied. Erasing American history benefits no one and only condemns us to repeat past mistakes. The supremacist groups had a permit; they had applied months earlier. The Antifa and Black Lives Matter groups did not have a permit. The local police at some point, on whose order we do not know, turned the pro-statue groups toward the Antifa and BLM groups, many of whom were armed with lethal weapons – soda cans filled with cement, bottles filled with urine, baseball bats and boards with screws protruding to do maximum harm, and improvised flamethrowers. These are the people who initiated the violence. How was this not a planned melee? Pit groups of demented racists — all of them on both sides are certainly that — against each other and violence is sure to occur. (Certainly, there were decent people among the protestors and counter-protesters who had no affiliation with the supremacist groups or Antifa or BLM. Heather Heyer was among them.)

Trump spoke out on Saturday and his statement was perfectly fine given the known facts at the time. But the media reacted as though he had defended the supremacist groups. He did not; not even close. It was as though no matter what Trump said, they were going to attack his remarks as being insufficient. When he reiterated his horror of the brawl the next day and named the groups present, they again reacted as if he had defended the supremacist groups because he said there was mayhem committed by both sides. He correctly stated that there was violence perpetrated by members of all the groups present. The media was apoplectic even though they surely knew what he said was true. Reporters on the scene saw the police stand down. Only one of them reported that truth. One has to wonder if talking points were distributed before the event took place and before Trump said a word about it.

The Democratic Party is no longer liberal, it is leftist. It is not progressive, it is regressive and repressive. It seeks to overturn the First Amendment. It means to indoctrinate, and has, successive generations via public and private education. It is becoming ever more fascist by the day. Along with groups like Antifa, BLM, and the host of anti-democratic groups George Soros funds to protest all around the nation, the media and the Democrats in Congress seek to overthrow an elected president in order to impose their vision of some sort of socialist utopia which of course will never exist. What will result if they get their way is a Venezuela-style two-tiered class system, the ultra rich and the very poor who are kept in their place by economic and social control. The millions of people who see the left for what it has become see this. It is why they voted for Trump.

It is disheartening to see so many American elites, privileged in wealth and position within the media and/or government be so completely of one, unthinking mind. They all have braces on their brains (Auntie Mame). So afraid to buck the rigid mindset of their peers, they have become mouthpieces for their own group identity. Do they believe the nonsense they spew? Who knows? Those in Congress, all the Democrats and the anti-Trump Republicans essentially care about one thing and one thing only: getting re-elected. They cannot afford to offend their donors or the lobbyists whose largesse fills their coffers. So they trip over each other getting to the nearest camera to align themselves with whatever opinion they think will put them on the right side of the money people. They are wrong so often.

Finally, Trump’s press conference on Tuesday made the left’s heads explode. Why? Because everything he said was absolutely true. He does not play by their tyrannical PC rules. He said what was true and that room full of puerile reporters shouting insults at him could not handle the truth. They want what they want to be true but it just is not. This entire episode, the behavior of all those protesters in Charlottesville and the bizarre behavior of the media will likely drive future voters to Trump, not away from him. Millions more than those who voted for him are as likely to be sick to death of the self-righteous preening of the talking heads: Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, Don Lemon, Shep Smith, etc. There must be a contest to see who can appear to be the most egregiously triggered by what Trump did or did not say.

So were the events of Saturday the result of a despicable plan to further undermine Trump? There was plenty of time and Charlottesville is the “capital of resistance.” If it was, it was evil and deadly and the people involved need to be prosecuted. Or is this a wild conspiracy theory? Perhaps. But the pieces fit. Will the DOJ and the FBI actually investigate the many mysteries that surround the events of that day? Not likely. The left in this country has long been and seems to remain above the law. But someday, maybe someone will come forward and tell the truth. What is certain is that the violence could easily have been prevented with the common sense strategies civilized cities put in place. America deserves much better from its media and its elected officials. The only person remembering why he is there is Donald Trump.

Editor’s note: An error on the purpose of McAuliffe’s pardoning of 60,000 felons that ran in an earlier version of the piece has been corrected.

The ridiculous campaign by virtually every media outlet, every Democrat and far too many squishy Republicans to label Trump some kind of racist and Nazi sympathizer is beginning to have the stink of an orchestrated smear. The conflagration in Charlottesville is beginning to feel like a set-up, perhaps weeks or months in the planning. Planned by whom? Time may tell. We know that Michael Signer, the mayor of Charlottesville, declared his city to be the “capital of the resistance” just after Trump’s inauguration. We know that Gov. Terry McAuliffe is a corruptocrat, joined at the hip to the Clintons. He pardoned sixty-thousand felons in order to ensure he delivered his state to the presidential election of Hillary Clinton. We know he would like to run for president himself.

We know that Obama and his inner circle have set up a war room in his D.C. home to plan and execute resistance to the Trump administration and his legislative agenda. None of these people care about the American people, or the fact that Trump won the election because millions of people voted for him. They suggest those deranged persons who gathered in Charlottesville as members of one of several fringe groups, Unite The Right, neo-Nazi or KKK, are Trump’s base — as if there are more than a few hundred or thousand of them throughout the country. There are not enough of them to affect anything or elect anyone. Those who are actual members of these small groups are most likely mentally ill to one degree or another. Trump has disavowed them all, over and over and over again. Liz Crokin, an entertainment reporter and no fan of Trump, wrote in 2016 that she had covered Trump for over a decade and in all that time, no one had ever suggested he was racist, homophobic, or sympathetic to white supremacists. That all began after he announced his campaign. It is as fake a narrative as the “Russia collusion” meme. The left set out to defame Trump from moment one. When he won the election, their shock, dismay and intolerance for every opinion that differs from their own shifted into hysterical overdrive. They mounted their crusade to destroy his presidency on Nov. 9, 2016.

What if Signer and McAuliffe, in conjunction with Antifa and other Soros-funded groups like Black Lives Matter, planned and orchestrated what happened in Charlottesville and meant for events to unfold roughly as they did? If they did, it was icing on their sick, immoral cake. If this was all part of a plan, one would hope those behind it suffer for their part in and responsibility for the tragic death of a young woman, Heather Heyer. The “founder” of Unite The Right, Jason Kessler, was an activist with Occupy Wall Street and Obama supporter.

Jason Kessler at Charlottesville City Hall, August 13, 2017

He sees himself as a professional provocateur. What if he was a ringer, a phony who revels in riling up some crazy people for some political purpose? We know the left is skilled in all manner of dirty tricks. That sort of thing was Robert Creamer’s job for the Hillary campaign, hiring thugs to incite violence that could then be blamed on Trump supporters. Think of Ferguson, Baltimore, Berkeley, etc. Antifa and BLM are every bit as fascist as any of the supremacist groups; they are more violent and there are more of them. Why is the left so afraid to admit this fact? Even Peter Beinart did in the Atlantic, written before last Saturday.

Since that day, the call to remove the statues on display that honor any members of the Confederacy has become shrill and frenzied. Erasing American history benefits no one and only condemns us to repeat past mistakes. The supremacist groups had a permit; they had applied months earlier. The Antifa and Black Lives Matter groups did not have a permit. The local police at some point, on whose order we do not know, turned the pro-statue groups toward the Antifa and BLM groups, many of whom were armed with lethal weapons – soda cans filled with cement, bottles filled with urine, baseball bats and boards with screws protruding to do maximum harm, and improvised flamethrowers. These are the people who initiated the violence. How was this not a planned melee? Pit groups of demented racists — all of them on both sides are certainly that — against each other and violence is sure to occur. (Certainly, there were decent people among the protestors and counter-protesters who had no affiliation with the supremacist groups or Antifa or BLM. Heather Heyer was among them.)

Trump spoke out on Saturday and his statement was perfectly fine given the known facts at the time. But the media reacted as though he had defended the supremacist groups. He did not; not even close. It was as though no matter what Trump said, they were going to attack his remarks as being insufficient. When he reiterated his horror of the brawl the next day and named the groups present, they again reacted as if he had defended the supremacist groups because he said there was mayhem committed by both sides. He correctly stated that there was violence perpetrated by members of all the groups present. The media was apoplectic even though they surely knew what he said was true. Reporters on the scene saw the police stand down. Only one of them reported that truth. One has to wonder if talking points were distributed before the event took place and before Trump said a word about it.

The Democratic Party is no longer liberal, it is leftist. It is not progressive, it is regressive and repressive. It seeks to overturn the First Amendment. It means to indoctrinate, and has, successive generations via public and private education. It is becoming ever more fascist by the day. Along with groups like Antifa, BLM, and the host of anti-democratic groups George Soros funds to protest all around the nation, the media and the Democrats in Congress seek to overthrow an elected president in order to impose their vision of some sort of socialist utopia which of course will never exist. What will result if they get their way is a Venezuela-style two-tiered class system, the ultra rich and the very poor who are kept in their place by economic and social control. The millions of people who see the left for what it has become see this. It is why they voted for Trump.

It is disheartening to see so many American elites, privileged in wealth and position within the media and/or government be so completely of one, unthinking mind. They all have braces on their brains (Auntie Mame). So afraid to buck the rigid mindset of their peers, they have become mouthpieces for their own group identity. Do they believe the nonsense they spew? Who knows? Those in Congress, all the Democrats and the anti-Trump Republicans essentially care about one thing and one thing only: getting re-elected. They cannot afford to offend their donors or the lobbyists whose largesse fills their coffers. So they trip over each other getting to the nearest camera to align themselves with whatever opinion they think will put them on the right side of the money people. They are wrong so often.

Finally, Trump’s press conference on Tuesday made the left’s heads explode. Why? Because everything he said was absolutely true. He does not play by their tyrannical PC rules. He said what was true and that room full of puerile reporters shouting insults at him could not handle the truth. They want what they want to be true but it just is not. This entire episode, the behavior of all those protesters in Charlottesville and the bizarre behavior of the media will likely drive future voters to Trump, not away from him. Millions more than those who voted for him are as likely to be sick to death of the self-righteous preening of the talking heads: Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, Don Lemon, Shep Smith, etc. There must be a contest to see who can appear to be the most egregiously triggered by what Trump did or did not say.

So were the events of Saturday the result of a despicable plan to further undermine Trump? There was plenty of time and Charlottesville is the “capital of resistance.” If it was, it was evil and deadly and the people involved need to be prosecuted. Or is this a wild conspiracy theory? Perhaps. But the pieces fit. Will the DOJ and the FBI actually investigate the many mysteries that surround the events of that day? Not likely. The left in this country has long been and seems to remain above the law. But someday, maybe someone will come forward and tell the truth. What is certain is that the violence could easily have been prevented with the common sense strategies civilized cities put in place. America deserves much better from its media and its elected officials. The only person remembering why he is there is Donald Trump.

Editor’s note: An error on the purpose of McAuliffe’s pardoning of 60,000 felons that ran in an earlier version of the piece has been corrected.

It’s been 12 years since American student Natalee Holloway vanished on May 30, 2005 while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba — and human remains that were discovered by her father and a private investigator are bringing her story back to life.

However, Dave Holloway isn’t feeling too optimistic of what DNA results might unveil, which could take up to a month.

“You always have your doubts,” he told Fox News. “I put myself in a position where there could be great disappointment… I was so defensive about getting hurt or even testing… And so when the test came back and showed they were human remains, I was shocked.”

He added, “We’ve chased a lot of leads and you have your hopes up, but when they fall through, you basically go to a funeral. Over and over again. So you have a wall built up, which I do, and so you just wait and see and try not to think about it. And that’s the only way I can cope with it. I’m sure when that day comes very soon I’ll probably be disappointed once again, if it’s not [Natalee’s].”

The lead first came from an informant named Gabriel, who befriended the former roommate of Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch man the 18-year-old was last seen with outside a bar before her disappearance.

Joran, now 30, is currently serving a 28-year sentence in a Peruvian jail for killing business student Stephany Flores — a murder that occurred five years to the day after Natalee’s disappearance.

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Joran van der Sloot

(AP)

Dave’s quest to find out what happened to his daughter, alongside private investigator T.J. Ward, is chronicled in a series titled “The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway” on the Oxygen channel premiering Saturday. The remains found in Aruba were proven to be human just a week ago.

While Dave has spent the last 12 years following every lead he’s received, the one he encountered in late 2015 was different.

Gabriel first met the man at a casino, quickly earning his friendship and trust in a matter of months. It was then that Gabriel decided to track down Dave and give him a call.

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Natalee Holloway and her father Dave.

(Courtesy of Dave Holloway)

“He said, ‘Look, I’ve been in contact with someone who’s apparently directly involved in the disappearance of your daughter,’” Dave recalled. “I have two daughters of my own and I know that if something happened to them, I’d hope I get the same kind of response… I already called the FBI, they didn’t return my calls. I called [Natalee’s mother] Beth, she hasn’t returned my call. And now I’ve called you. Just give me five minutes of your time and I’ll tell you all that I know.’

“And he did… I asked T.J. to look into this and get more information and determine whether or not we should pursue it. Because we pursued a lot of leads and they ended up nowhere. So that’s what he did. He met up with Gabriel, interviewed him, and told me, ‘Dave, this guy knows enough. We’ve got to pursue this until the end.’”

According to Gabriel, Joran attempted to kiss Natalie after her drink was spiked with date rape drug GHB. However, when Natalie began to foam at the mouth, he panicked and she fatally choked on her vomit. Within a few hours, a frightened Joran asked his father, Paulus van der Sloot, for help.

The judge in training allegedly stomped on her legs and placed Natalee’s folded corpse in a burlap sack. From there, they drove to an Aruban park where she was buried. They planted a cactus over the spot to cover their tracks. Paulus reportedly instructed his son never to say a word about what happened. However, Joran allegedly confessed to his friend in confidence.

“They lived together for several months and during those months, Joran shared a lot of information with him that is not public knowledge… And that’s one of the reasons we pursued this,” claimed Dave.

Paulus passed away in 2010 from a heart attack at age 57.

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Dave Holloway with private investigator T.J. Ward.

(Courtesy of Oxygen)

Relying on their new information, Dave and T.J. made several trips to Aruba and ended up collecting evidence that tested positive for human remains. Dave also noted that there wasn’t immediate movement from law enforcement concerning their discovery.

“We haven’t heard a word,” he claimed. “I can’t answer that question because you have to go back to 2005… [Back then], I figure, these are police, they know what they’re talking about… Their direction in how they operate is [that] there’s no sense of urgency. So I’m just wondering if we’re dealing with the same thing right now.”

And while reliving the loss of his daughter on camera was painful, the still-grieving father believes the press will continue to keep the case alive.

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“The media has always been great to us and has really kept the investigation on track,” he said. “And if this turns out to be true, we need some documentation because of what we’ve experienced in the past… I learned from my mistakes in 2005 that when I go to the island, there’s going to be a camera and we’re going to document things. And that’s exactly what we did. And it started probably in February or March of this year.”

While Dave is trying not to wonder whether those remains are of his child, he is certain of one thing if the DNA test comes back positive.

“If it is Natalee, then that’s the end for me and my family. I mean, that’s the end. We finally found out what happened and it’s resolved,” he said.

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Dave Holloway with T.J. Ward

(Courtesy of Oxygen)

And Dave believes he will someday find out what happened. In 2014, PEOPLE Magazine reported Joran will face U.S. criminal charges sometime in 2038 after he served his Peruvian sentence. He is accused of extortion for taking $25,000 from Natalee’s mother in exchange for false information.

But despite the newfound interest in Natalee’s story, Dave also hopes people will discover who she was before Aruba.

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Natalee Holloway (center) with friends.

(AP)

“Natalee was an all-American kid,” he said. “Straight A student. Very pretty girl. Had her life and goals already planned out. She was going to go to the University of Alabama with a scholarship… You know, her goal was to be a pediatrician and there’s no doubt in my mind that if this haven’t happened in Aruba, we’d be calling her Dr. Holloway… And in a blink of an eye, all those hopes and dreams were gone forever.”

“The Disappearance of Natalee Holloway” premieres August 19th on Oxygen.

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“I would urge people…instead of participating in the screaming matches and potential violence, find a local business you support, maybe a Jewish-run bakery or an African American-run bakery,” Fey said on the “SNL” spinoff Thursday night.

“Order a cake with the American flag on it, like this one (she gestures), and just eat it,” she said while stuffing her face with cake.

Fey went off on several rants while eating the American flag cake including slamming Trump for defending Conferderate statues.

“Donny Johnny says we need to defend our country’s ‘beautiful’ Confederate monuments when you know he would take them down in a second if he thought he could build some poorly-constructed condos on the spot,” she said.

She said “sheet-caking” is a “grassroots movement” that most women have been doing “once a week since the election.”

MINNEAPOLIS – Minneapolis City Council members unanimously confirmed a new police chief on Friday after his predecessor was ousted following an officer’s fatal shooting of an Australian woman who had called 911 for help.

Medaria Arradondo, a 28-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department, became the city’s first black police chief in a vote that was greeted by lengthy applause. The Minneapolis native told council members he was determined to serve “the 400,000 bosses that I’m responsible for.”

Arradondo, 50, replaces Janee Harteau, who stepped down after the mayor asked for her resignation following the July 15 shooting of Justine Damond.

Damond had called police to report a possible sexual assault behind her home. She was fatally shot as she approached the responding squad car in the alley. Investigators said Damond was unarmed when she was shot once in the stomach by Officer Mohamed Noor.

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Justine Damond was fatally shot on July 15 after she called to report a possible sexual assault behind her home.

(Reuters)

His partner, Matthew Harrity, told investigators that he was startled by a loud noise right before Damond approached their police SUV. Noor has declined to be interviewed by investigators.

The state’s investigation of Damond’s death continues. A spokeswoman for the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation declined Friday to give any detailed update.

Neither officer’s body camera was switched on at the time of Damond’s shooting, drawing widespread criticism of the department. Harteau was absent from the city for several days following the shooting, and was forced out just a day after her return. Mayor Betsy Hodges said she had lost confidence in the chief.

Harteau’s tenure also included the 2015 death of Jamar Clark, a black man who was fatally shot in a confrontation with two officers. The officers ultimately were not charged in the case. Clark’s death sparked weeks of protests.

Arradondo had been the interim police chief. Before Friday’s confirmation vote, Hodges said Arradondo “will be a chief and leader who will not only ingrain changes made in the department in recent years, he will move forward with his own inspiring vision for transformation.”

Arradondo has held various posts in the department, including patrol, internal affairs and inspector. Harteau named him chief of staff in 2014, where he became heavily involved in community outreach.

His status as a department lifer made some people question whether an outsider would be a better choice to take over the department. Council Member Linea Palmisano, who represents the ward where Damond was killed, voted for Arradondo but said her support depends on how well the department performs in the future.

“We have to set clear measurable objectives and move past platitudes,” she said.

Nicholas Fuentes, an 18-year-old student who attended the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., this past weekend, said that he’s received death threats for months over his conservative viewpoints — enough for him to decide it’s time to leave Boston University.

Fuentes said he made the decision to abandon his Political Science degree a month ago after being constantly threatened over his conservative views. He said no longer felt safe on campus, and will not return for the fall semester.

Still, despite the intensity of the backlash he’s received, he has absolutely “no regrets” about taking part in the controversial white-nationalist movement.

“I went to represent this new strain of conservatives, of people in the right wing who are opposed to mass immigration and multiculturalism,” Fuentes told Fox News on Thursday. “For a long time, this existed on the fringes. I thought it was a political victory – we exposed the removal of Confederate statues, and this disenfranchised group of white males.”

A Boston University spokesman confirmed to Fox News that the student had indeed left the school earlier this week and that “the safety and security of our students is our highest priority.”

While the ideology of the movement, he contended, used to be associated only with older men in America “like Pat Buchanan and Samuel Francis,” he believes a significant wave in the younger generation have been captivated by the ideology.

“We have basically been told our whole lives that white people are racist and evil and should be erased,” Fuentes explained. “We have basically been told that it is a crime to be born a white male.”

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Mourners surround an impromptu memorial after the death of a young woman after a “Unite the Right” attendee rammed his car into counter-protesters.

(REUTERS/Justin Ide)

The student, who hails from a suburb of Chicago, is of Mexican lineage and contends that he and almost all other attendees did not go to the rally out of racist motivations, but rather most were like him and consider themselves to be “preservationists” staunchly against high levels of immigration.

“The picture the media keeps using is of one person with a Nazi flag, there were more one thousand there who didn’t have Nazi flags,” Fuentes said. “The vast majority of people there were regular, decent people. I didn’t meet a single violent person. Our side is just preservationist.”

Fuentes noted that the Charlottesville rally had been in the works for about three months, and that people joined the fray not only from all over the U.S., but from Canada and various countries in Europe. But after posting on social media about going to the event – which turned tragic after a driver rammed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing a woman – Fuentes’ own firestorm began.

“I suddenly got dozens of messages on Twitter and Facebook telling me to go and kill myself and that if they see me they will beat the sh– out of me. Stuff of that nature,” he said. “At least 10 to 20 of them were death threats.”

Fuentes said Boston University had given him opportunities to express his political views — and his support of Donald Trump — leading up to the November presidential election last year.

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“I made a short video presentation about my support for Trump before the election and that caused a major uproar. People wanted to organize a debate between myself and a big Hillary supporter,” Fuentes recalled. “We went to the Dean and they gave us an auditorium, a police officer for security detail, they really made it happen.”

He is now taking a semester off and then intends to start at Auburn University in Alabama in the spring.

“It was one of my first picks after high school,” Fuentes continued, adding that the “friendly territory” of the Deep South will enable him to express his opinions freely without jeopardizing his safety.

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In addition to studies, he hosts his own YouTube talk show modeled after Trump’s key campaign catchphrase “Make America Great Again,” and highlighted that he mostly has liberal-leaning friends – but the few who are conservative have experienced widespread backlash from their university peers across the country.

“Even worse than the threats I have received,” Fuentes surmised.

And even though he stands staunchly by his beliefs and makes no apology about making his mark in Charlottesville, he doesn’t plan on attending any such rallies in the near future.

“Everyone is a little shaken up,” Fuentes added. “The political climate has become so intense and so violent and toxic.”

Hollie McKay has been a FoxNews.com staff reporter since 2007. She has reported extensively from the Middle East on the rise and fall of terrorist groups such as ISIS in Iraq. Follow her on twitter at @holliesmckay